Seeking Dreams
by shukuchi
Summary: Kurei looks back on Joker's presence in the Uraha. This takes place during the mangas, and is Kurei-Joker. PG13 just so I can write what I want(there's nothing worth the rating yet and might never be).


Seeking Dreams  
  
A Romance Within The Uruha  
  
By shukuchi  
  
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Disclaimer: None of the FoR characters belong to me. Dang.  
  
This fanfic doesn't have a dedication yet, mainly because I don't know much about what'll happen in it beyond the basic concept.  
  
There is Kurei's POV in this fic, if you can't tell by the first few sentences.  
  
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Live.  
  
Everywhere I go, those words seem to follow. It... was what my mother told me to do, even as she died. It's what everyone told me after Kurenai's death. No one even bothered to consider it: what if I didn't want to live? And, ever since then, I have worn two masks. One to hide my face, to hide the scar that whispers, every time I look in the mirror, "She is dead. Forever." And the words are true. At Mori's, my adopted father's, hands, she is gone. And there is no one else. No one who can obey those words that haunt after I have touched them. Where I go, death follows. Is that the meaning of "cursed flame"?  
  
No one ever wanted me. My own birth father would have killed me for my "evil spirit" when I was too young to know what path I'd take in life. It was his new wife, not him, not even another elder, who took pity on me and asked for my life. It was her, whose own son was the reason why I'd have died!!!  
  
And that is what the second mask is for. To pretend I don't care, to laugh at the world without the anger and bitterness I feel in every breath. It exists to give me the strength I'll never really have. This mask is more used than the other, worn and fraying. I need more anesthesias; to sew closed the rips and holes from a worthless life. And I need time without it to fix that mask, rather than stab myself again and again with threaded needle, until, no matter what, it can never be removed. I need time. And you almost gave me it.  
  
But now you're gone. And the mask crumbles in my hands. The mask that can't be seen nor touched and it is my hand the nails dig into, and not the mask. A drop of blood, pure in its redness, sliding down my hand, contrasting against the pale skin and dark robes. Gently leaving me, leaving the veins where it could flow and live, for cool, dead earth, a place where it won't have to live. And it slowly falls through the air...  
  
That day, we both showed our faces. Strange, really, in normal circumstances I'd never show my face to someone I just met.  
  
You were wearing lipstick that day.  
  
I don't know why that just popped into my head, but it's true. A male wearing lipstick was a little bit startling. I... silly as it sounds, I thought I was the only one to do that. That one small detail entered my mind, and I know it was true.  
  
Then I took off both masks as I invited you to eat with me. I didn't try to hide the grief in my heart as I asked for your skills. Most Uraha I don't trust enough to allow them within a 1000-foot radius of my sleeping form, yet I trusted you immediately. Raiha would call it "fate", and maybe he'd be right. Something must have drawn me to a stranger... I do not know what. Yet when I uncovered my face, you did the same with yours. I didn't know how much that meant then; I would have portrayed myself as the naively trusting protagonist without a thought to what you were risking. But you... you didn't let me know either. Instead, you were relaxed and calm, even though a moment ago, you had been attacking someone who obeyed me. How was I to know that you never showed your eyes to anyone you didn't intend on killing?  
  
The story of those eyes was something I didn't yet know. It didn't matter to me at that point. Of course that all changed when I asked you to join me. You were in it for the fighting, and admitted it then. However, a moment later, you laughingly told me something that would change everything: "I'll join you with one condition: I don't have to respect you." For a moment, I thought I had heard you wrong from the heavy accent. No, I hadn't, and that would be what made you more than just another Uraha.  
  
That was you.  
  
The drop of blood splatters on the ground and, as if from a memory, I hear you say a last goodbye, your long bleached hair rustling in a wind.  
  
You are dead. That is all I can comprehend.  
  
Will they tell me to keep living now? 


End file.
